The Red Hot Chili Peppers is one of my favorite bands and this is one of their best dance songs. It's fun for the whole family!
Angels Carry the Sun is pending publication with Lilly Press, anticipated date of arrival, June 2010. Visit River Poets Journal and click on "New Books/Lilly Press."
Here I am pretending to be Alice in Wonderland in front of the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia.
This is an almost-done version of my front cover design. My husband took the picture.
The sandwich-board method of book promotion.
book promo videos
My 2009 Pushcart-nominated story, "Carp with Water in their Ears," can be found here: River Poets Journal.
Bartleby-Snopes is nominating my story, "The Librarian and the Janitor" for the 2010 Pushcart Prize, too!
My story, "Dentist," won third place in Bartleby-Snopes Dec. story-of-the-month contest. "Holograms" won second place back in Sep.
Where I'm going for my book-salesgirl act (readings):
Wildflower Cafe
316 S. New St.
Bethlehem, PA
Mon, Feb. 8. 2010 8:30 p.m.
InFusion Coffee and Tea
7133 Germantown Ave.
Phila, PA
Fri, Feb. 12, 2010 8 p.m.
Lambertville City Market
74 N. Main St.
Lambertville, NJ
Sat, Feb. 13, 2010 7 p.m.
Recent Publications
Summer/Fall 2009, Winter 2010 Story, "Hero Worship," is now up on Sixers Review.
Story, "Holograms," will be in Sep issue of Bartleby-Snopes.
Poem, "Car Problems," Sep issue of The Battered Suitcase.
Story, "Pyramids," Aug issue of The Big Table online. I know it was supposed to be Aug but I am still not finding it yet....
Flash Fiction, "Twinkle," Aug in Ascent Aspirations.
Two Poems, "Horse Tree" and "Where are we Going?," in Ascent Aspirations November 2009. Link now goes directly to it....
Story, "God's PInk Flower, #27," can be found here: Frostwriting.
Poem, "Almost an Epiphany," this fall in Waterways, volume 30, #3.
Poem, "Foie Gras," this fall in The Black Boot (Not up yet online, already out in print.)
Story, "The Queens of Silly," in River Poets Journal fall issue.
Poem, "This Resolution," is up now on Counterexample Poetics website.
Poem, "Integrity," in summer issue of The Big Table online.
Flash fiction, "The Big Bang," will be in October issue of A cappella Zoo print journal.
Flash fiction, "Kindness," in Aug at The Cynic online mag.
Flash fiction, "Bob's Jalapeno Hummus," in Hoi Polloi III.
Flash fiction, "Club Hellaciously Fabulous," went up in July on "Calliope Nerve.
Flash fiction, "The Persimmon Tree," archived in The Northville Review.
Poem, "Pariah" in Shoots and Vines as of Oct. 7.
9-4-09 Flash fiction, "Two Little Deaths" is up on Danse Macabre as of today.
9-11-09 Flash Fiction, "Safe," is up on Calliope Nerve now.
Poem, "A More Significant Sun," will be published in print magazine, ILLUMEN on Oct 1.
Poem, "Rebirth of Venus," will be included in this fall's issue of The Chaffey Review.
"Visiting Hours" will be in Blue Print Review, issue 23.
"Gumball Machines and Death," will be in Jan. 2010 issue of Ascent Aspirations.
Oct. '09 "Alone in the Road with Everything," will be included in the upcoming issue of The Quills Quarterly.
Oct. 09 Ginosko Literary Journal will be including, "Frostbitten" in issue #10.
Bloodlotus has now (Nov.) published "Club Hellaciously Fabulous.
Weirdyear (has it been? yes, yes, yes!) will publish "Appliance Repair" on Nov. 16th, on their front page.
Folly Magazine is going to publish three poems, "Insomnia on the Night of a Power Outage," "The Holy Trinity," and "Flat World." Haven't found out exactly when yet!
The Northville Review is taking "The Direction of Chaos." Probably up sometime soon.
Bartleby-Snopes is taking "Dentist," my first (I think) story about blatant sexism. That will be going online in December.
Poem, "JFK-Assassination-Baby-Boomer Support Group," will be published in Shoots and Vines online Dec. 30th.
Sugar Mule will be publishing my poems, "Laundromat," "Conversation on a Train," and "Babes in the Woods," Feb. 1, 2010 in issue 34, online.
Eskimo Pie will publish my story, "Cinderella Hooks Up," online sometime in Jan. 2010
Thirteen Myna Birds will be publishing one of my all-time- favorite stories, "The Sky is Satisfied," on Dec. 3, 2009.
Wood Coin is taking "Decisions, Decisions." It will be in their "Predators>>>Pets>>>Foodstuffs Issue" which will be published sometime this spring.
Dec. 4, 2009 My story "Holograms" has now been reprinted in Ginosko #9 (ginoskoliterary.journal.com.) Bartleby-Snopes published it a few months back....
decomP is publishing my story, "The Sea of Maybe," in Feb. 2010.
SNReview (.org, not .com) is publishing my poem, "The Mountain Wears Down," and reprinting the poem "A More Significant Sun" in its winter issue.
River Poets Journal has published my flash fiction story, "The Various Colors of Desire" on their Reading Room page.
Glossolalia will be publishing my story "High Tide" in their January 2010 issue.
Feb. 4, 2010 My story, "Cinderella Hooks Up" is now on eskimopie.
I am being
optimistic
and leaving
room
for
future
publications.
More journal entries:
Dec. 28, 2009 I am happy at the moment. I just went to the library and got out Pride and Prejudice. Now, I know all of you literary snobs are going to think, "Oh my God! Ms. Hotshot/supposedly-up-and-coming has never read that?! You have got to be KIDDING me! We're so much better than her because we read it in eighth grade!" Well, you all can just stuff it! For a long time I was trying not to sully my literary style by whoring myself out to every damn book that came down the pike! I was trying to develop myself as an INDIVIDUAL writer, not some copycat! So y'all can just go to hell if you don't like that I haven't read this book yet! I'm reading it NOW, okay?! And I know I'm a little overly feisty. That's just my nature. I also happen to be a redhead and maybe the two features do actually go together. Which makes me a living, breathing cliche. Other redheads I've known have also been feisty. Or just pouty, sullen and implacable. Or simply spunky and helpful. But I'm the feisty sort. And I will slam you into the wall if you can't handle my reading habits. Good thing you're not here! You're safe! Happy New Year!
LATER--I'm sorry for emotional abusing you, the various visitors to my website. I should have sent "I" messages instead, such as "I feel badly when imagining people out there judging me," or "I feel like I haven't read some pretty important literature and it makes me feel inadequate." Something like that would have been a much more mature response to--to my own paranoid imaginings. I know I really shouldn't be alienating all my fans right now (yes, the legions of them,) even if I have worked hard all my life to elevate the practice of alienation to a high art form! Okay, I hope we've made up! I'll be good now. For awhile.
Dec. 29, 2009 My agitated little entry up there reminds me of this:
It looks like it would be a good site to read if I had time to read it! Someday I will write a letter that goes like this, "Dear Bookslut, I hope you fall in love with my book,
Angels Carry the Sun. Love, The Bookprude."
Dec. 30, 2009 Well, soon I'll have 100 webpages of blather to add to my over ninety journals, huh? I'm so excited that there will be a blue moon on New Year's Eve. I'll have to be very careful not to get into a big knock-down, drag-out fight with my husband like we do occasionally on full moons, (expecially if I'm PMS-ing.) If it's a full moon and I'm PMS-ing, there's no hope for anything! (I'd better start apologizing now, just in case I skate fast downhill--with brass knuckles on--to that point of no return at the big silver basin bottom of the blue moon! CLANNGGGGG!!! Stay tethered and sweet. Calm. Docile. Civil. Composed. All that garbage.
Dec. 31, 2009 An online mag called SNReview (.org, not .com) accepted a poem called "The Mountain Wears Down" yesterday. An intense poem. I love it. From last winter. Was in one of the first batches that I sent out when I first really started trying to get published (last Feb.)
One of my sister-in-laws is now following me on Twitter, so now I feel like I have to watch what I say! It's one thing to talk to anonymous people who may or may not even be out there...but...!
Let's talk about New Year's Resolutions. You can find some here:
I'll come up with another list of resolutions a little later (maybe tonight) because I love literary exercises like that. Speaking of exercises, I am going to flatten my stomach out this year if it kills me!
And I've been thinking of writing a poem called "Penis Envy." All my life, I never believed in it. It's like believing in God or something. Ladies, do you believe in Penis Envy?--or are the guys just jealous of us and--to use a Freudian term against him--just projecting? Maybe they're really jealous of us!
I'm just writing all this because I can't get to work and save homeless people, etc. It's snowing and the roads are treacherous. I should make myself useful and go downstairs and make pancakes. So much maternal guilt around here....You all know I'm tormented, right? But I took a poll at a reading once and asked who amongst the audience was tormented....There was this sickening little pause in which not a soul moved. I almost had enough time to think, "Oh, God. I'm the only one!" but then everyone in the entire room raised their hands! It was all a bunch of writers, of course. But I suspect we aren't alone either.
Jan 1, 2010 Good morning, hungover people of the world and welcome to the year of my dream coming true!!!! This typing bitch is glad, glad, glad! This typing bitch has found her niche! This collapsing, world-weary, chained-inside-the-box girl has found something to celebrate! Here comes Angels Carry the Sun
Some of you will like it. Some will LOVE it and find life-sustaining joy in it (I do....) Some will want to start the morning fire with it....
My gut feeling is that 2010 is going to be very interesting for me. I could be completely delusional. The white coats could be on their way right now. They'll tell me they were just following orders and I'll say that my writing this book was just my way of following orders too. The orders of my heart and spirit. So just put me in a padded cell, why don't ya. At least read the friggin' thing first. Read it and then throw away the key if you must. I'll just be tapdancing on my stark white safety mat, dancing with joy at finally getting published at all. Ain't no one ever gonna take that away from me! Never evah evah! This typing bitch is GLAD, GLAD, GLAD!
You tell 'em, Elvis! Wow!
Jan. 3, 2010 I had a lovely greek salad today with my publisher, Judith. She just made me go through my journal entries and eradicate all evil, offensive material. And just to clarify any misunderstandings: I love people in general and I especially love writers. Writers are one big happy (sort of) family and I think we should all stick together. And I promise never to be offensive to anyone again. Especially writers!
LATER--my husband is downstairs making popcorn in a popper that he bought me early in our relationship. That popper is around sixteen or seventeen years old! I am up here just getting my quick little YouTube fix. I guess it could be called a YouTube quickie.
Jan. 4, 2010 I'm freaking frustrated. Lunch breaks go by so zippity-do-dah fast and if I'm on a roll, like I was today, it just makes it all that more painful to go back to work! I've just been getting zippo done lately! Got an acceptance today though which of course feels nice. Glossolalia is taking my story, "High Tide." It'll be up sometime this month.
Things to Do:
finish that jigsaw puzzle with the kids
pretend I'm Janis Joplin just for the fun of it
write a really good book that will make people glad to be alive
love my husband to the best of my ability cuz he's my man and he's a good one
keep working out but concentrate on abs
try and keep in better contact with my friends, near and far
make moussaka
try and get rid of some of the old sentimental birthday cards
channel all evil impulses through the love-and-decency contraption
make sure you have back up parts for that contraption
Don't worry, you're a bad-ass typin' bitch!
By the way, Judith, I thought my family was nuts (admittedly we are!) Your family is a bunch of outlaws!
LATER--Judith says she is passionately in love with bread. It comes from her early childhood with an Italian foster mom. The smell of baking bread throughout the house. I tried to copy what she wrote in the email into this webpage but couldn't. It was beautiful and just made me want to bake her the best loaf of bread ever, carbs or not! Eat, eat!
Jan. 5, 2010 Here I am. Miss Compulsive. Or Ms. Compulsive. Anxious today about the idea of sending work to out to big mags like The New Yorker. I sent "Hero Worship" out to them a long time ago so why be intimidated? I've received plenty of rejections in my life! I can suffer through a confetti of rejections until someone in the big parade finally thinks, "That story or poem would fit into this issue just fine, let's pull the girl up onto the float!" Okay. So. I will twirl my literary baton until they pull me up. The parade starts this week sometime.
LATER--I may be 99 years old when they pull me up onto that float but I've pretty much decided that this is a rest-of-my-life endeavor.
The parade metaphor got me thinking about majorettes and chearleaders...which got me thinking about Tony Basil and that old "Mickey" song. And that led me to this, which is kind of neat.
Jan. 7, 2010 Six minutes until I go downstairs and watch "Celebrity Rehab" with Matthew. He loves all those addict shows. I could live without them but it's a togetherness thing. We have popcorn. (I did actually kind of like the sex addict show though....)
I haven't been doing any reading (besides a little Pride and Prejudice on the treadmill.) I've decided that if the title is frightening, then it's better not to read beyond. For instance the newspaper article about the toddler who was forgotten by a daycare worker and left in a sweltering van all day, found dead at the end of the day. I can't bear to read things that hurt that much. So I don't read them anymore. A glance at the title and I know better. That one made me want to write a story called "The Baby Lives." It made me want to screech at God or fate or whatever, "Rewind that scenario AND DO EXACTLY WHAT I SAY--IF I TELL YOU THE BABY LIVES, THE BABY EF-FING LIVES!" I would rather live in an illusory world...than a real world where people suffer far too much....
Well, time for drug addicts and popcorn....
Jan. 8, 2010 This morning my husband was singing "Oh, Phoebe, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind!" I astutely recognized Tony's Basil's "Mickey" which has been riccocheting around inside my head since I posted it in that mashup video on the fifth. I asked him if he'd been purusing my website and he hadn't been. I'm not very surprised by these little incidents anymore.
NPR programming, even little snippets heard second-hand from friends, can be highly informative. Whether the topic is pileated woodpeckers or Captain Beefheart, nary a day passes without news of something or someone interesting crossing those airwaves.
Which brings me around to more New Year's Resolutions:
1. Start paying attention to the news/world events at least once in awhile.
2. Pray for the drug and sex addicts of the world. (***The drug addict show last night was actually really good.)
3. exfoliate, exfoliate, exfoliate.
4. Become a rock legend. (yeah, right)
5. For God's sake, be sensible.
***Heidi Fleiss lives with a bunch of parrots in Death Valley these days....)
Being sensible is probably the hardest resolution. Okay. Starting right now! On your mark, get set, GO! Sensible forever!!
Jan. 9, 2010 Almost totally forgot to put up the NPR links. Well, here they are.
(*This typin' bitch has seen the pyramid but would revisit for the Mona Lisa. Years ago when Matthew and I went, the Louvre workers were on strike so we couldn't go in. By the way, this typin' bitch knows exactly why Mona Lisa is smiling...and she ain't tellin' a soul.)
Jan. 10, 2010
I like this Ted Kooser poem a lot:
Jan. 11, 2010
I need to go to rehab for YouTube addicts. D.J. Phoeb just can't stop.
And there's water on the moon! Next thing, they'll have chicken McNuggets there....McMoon. Oh, I wish I hadn't thought of that. It's depressing. The moon is one of my favorite things! Shouldn't defile it with greasy junk food thoughts....
The photos of myself that were here are now on the "sweet hookups" page because they were causing technical problems here.
Dear Readers,
I am writing to let you know that after a lifetime of scribbling away in marble notebooks kept in two-to-three plastic milk crates in every closet of every place I've ever lived (they're really beat-up now, believe me,) I have finally managed to make some arrangements in order that other human beings might actually read my words. When I was in my twenties, I thought "I'm a poet, I think I'll try and get published." The twenties are not called the "trying twenties" for nothing. Being rather weak-willed and thin-skinned, I sent out a total of about twelve poems to various literary magazines, all of which were politely rejected. Discouraged, I did what came naturally and gave up. I went on to trying other things, since there were so many other things to try, but on the way to these other adventures, I stopped at the local drugstore and bought, of course, another inevitable marble notebook.
My book, Angels Carry the Sun, began to grow, sort of like a science experiment with crystals--or sometimes like cream cheese left in the back of the fridge. It grew for years, often painfully neglected, attended to occasionally by pen, occasionally by Continued (click on "Sweet Hookups" above.)
October 2009
Here's a Halloweeny video. My mom had this record and when I was around twelve I was a big Screamin' Jay Hawkins fan.
And about this season's Project Runway, my husband is lamenting the premature loss of "the quirky girl." Well, my husband gets to live 24-7 with a "quirky girl" anyway, but we miss the halcyon days of Wendy Pepper and Jay McCarroll!
Now here's a guy whose had a lot of lingerie thrown at him in life:
Oct. 6, 2009 (Okay, I'll be organized and put specific dates in now...)
When I view my "website statistics" to see from which geographical regions the viewers of this website are hailing, I notice that the further away in geography, the lower the percentage of viewing, but what gave me pause today was wondering what the "OTHER" category was way down at the bottom of the column of countries. Is this the category for countries too tiny to even name individually? Or could it be that there are extraterrestrials out there who are interested in my writing?
Oct. 7, 2009
This weekend my family and I will be making our Heidi Klum scarecrow. Rather than running to the thrift shop for high heels for it, I might just use the one pair I own. I never wear them anyway!
Oct. 8, 2009
Sometimes when I write it feels like I'm in the middle of this big soap opera. Today's notes to myself concerning Flower Symbolism for Dummies are as follows: Have Moon Ray be Andy. Have Annie Sweet Dream not be one of the favorite wives but be Marla (and Theresa) and have Annie and Andy have been married in their former lives at the commune.
Here's a link though to some nice artwork by a Canadian friend, Rocky Green:
Oct. 9, 2009
Besides the fine education I acquired through the School of Hard Knocks, I should also get an honorary degree from National Public Radio. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't know about anything, including Herta Muller!
Oct. 12, 2009
This is getting to be like a diary that I share with anyone who's around. Weird! Anyway, my Dad and my husband were talking last night and they both agree that instead of bombing other countries with bombs, we should bomb them with food, money and maybe bottles of wine. Maybe not the bottles of wine, but definitely the food and money. Aren't the men in my life cool? I wish they ruled the world, but just...not me. No one's allowed to rule ME. I rule myself and that's it.
Here are the Ting Tings. At least I think that's their name. My name is P-H-O-E-B-E, not Fiby, not Phebe, not Pheobe, not Feebee!
Oct. 14, 2009
On today's lunch break I got sidetracked in procuring sustenance. In the end, I managed to improve the metaphoric structure of exactly two sentences in Flower Symbolism for Dummies. The next time I have a chance to write will be--if I am to be a good wife and mother at least--oh, around 9 o'clock tonight. Goodbye sweet words...for now....
LATER...
Instead of doing dishes...I'm posting a recent photo.
I look better than Heidi Klum, don't I? I'm referring to the Heidi on my porch. The one with weeds for hair and a plastic bag face. The one who stole my high heels and just loafs around all day long...what a freeloader.
Oct. 18, 2009
My publisher's daughter loves Billy Idol. I love the girl in this video. If I had directed this video though, I would have insisted on MORE GIRL DANCING, less TV screens. She rocks.
Oct. 20, 2009
Finally found a "Because" video I like! This is from a Charlie Chaplin movie, "The Great Dictator." I would like to see this movie sometime...although it's tragicomic. If there is a better word for something funny and tragic at the same time, someone please leave it in the guest book for me.
Oct. 21, 2009
Dear weird, addictive, website Diary,
Today my characters are all doing so many different things, and undergoing so many changes, and needing so much nurturing and attention that I am being stretched like taffy to accommodate everyone. Oh my goodness gracious, it's out of control! Call in the fiction cops before some kind of disorganized-plot riot breaks out! I mean, if I don't tell these freaks what to do, who will? I have MACE you figmentary freaks. You WILL submit to my brilliance eventually (when I become brilliant, that is...I'm working on that too...)
Oct. 28, 2009
Dear W.A.W. Diary,
One, I do not have enough time to write. Two, my husband appears to have survived the swine flu, and three, here's a video that reveals a darker side of Jim Henson.
And here's the lighter side of Jim Henson.
Oct. 29, 2009
Today I have a job interview. Hoping it works out.
Oct. 31, 2009
If I had a band, I'd call it Trophy Wife. I used to love to just sit around and make up band names. Like Nirvana. I came up with that name about seven years before I ever even heard of Kurt Kobain! The nearest I ever came to being in a band though was my first boyfriend's being in a band. They let me write a song for them once and it was a really strange one inspired by M.C. Escher. It had something about "sheep climbing up waterfalls" in it--it was about insomnia. Then there was another brush with band membership when my husband was in a latin jazz/rock fusion band years back. They were incredible and I felt a really strong Beatles "toppermost of the poppermost" vibe coming from them, but they petered out pretty quickly, I forget why. I guess life just sidetracked them--totally understandable. Anyway, they were considering letting me sing. I was so psyched but I guess they decided to keep it just a guys' club. Guys and their bands. So much drama! When they break up it's like they're breaking up a romantic relationship!
Here's a hilarious video. These girls are experts in their field!
And here's a writer getting interrupted. Happy Halloween!
Nov. 1, 2009
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine MY house would be this messy! But at least I got some writing done today. Four pages in Venus and Her Crown of Thorns. For me that is amazingly fast progress. Venus is novel #3. I've decided to work on that and Flower Symbolism for Dummies concurrently. I am moody and some moods are much better suited for Venus than for Flower Symbolism.
Well, now it's time to wash the pink from last night's fairy costume out of my hair....
Nov. 2, 2009
One of my worst fears is that my vision will deteriorate to the point where I can't put my lipstick on straight. (And this is so funny, I cried.)
Nov. 4, 2009
Kurt Vonnegut said something in Palm Sunday about how to be a writer one must feel kind of "marginalized" and out-of-it. He said he spent his whole time at Cornell "trying to find the perfect shade of gray flannel." Well, we could have been friends; I'm marginal and I LOVE fabric shops! Except I'm even more marginal than he was, I didn't last two weeks on Temple's college paper!
Let's do a word of the day. How about cad. We'll do more man-hating words as Valentine's Day approaches. It will be so much fun!
cad--an ill-bred man, esp. one who behaves in a dishonorable or irresponsible way toward women.
And because I can't end of a sour note, let's do a nicer word. How about...
piquant--
1. agreeably pungent or sharp in taste or flavor; pleasantly biting or tart: a piquant aspic.
2. agreeably stimulating, interesting, or attractive: a piquant glance.
3. of an interestingly provocative or lively character: a piquant wit.
4. Archaic. sharp or stinging, esp. to the feelings.
aspic--
1. a savory jelly usually made with meat or fish stock and gelatin, chilled and used as a garnish and coating for meats, seafoods, eggs, etc.
2. a similar jelly made with spiced tomato juice and gelatin, served as a salad.
Well, I wonder if aspic will disappear from the language soon since no one uses it? Maybe I should use it today, so as to save it. Maybe that will marginalize me even more!
Oh, the piquant cads of the world eating their aspic so carelessly....
Nov. 6, 2009
There is this kids' book called something like, Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type. The last thing my husband said to me before he konked out was "Click, Clack, Moo, Bitches that Type." Well, I never! No, nevermind. I did.
Nov. 7, 2009
Weep, little Philadelphia artists, weep. At of 2010, you can only apply for a Pew grant, the big whopper $60,000 grant, if you've been NOMINATED. My husband knows several people who've won that in the past. Now it's seeming more out of reach for people. At least for unconnected people. But don't give up, you obscure, shy, behind-the-scenes, outsider-artist types slaving away in obscurity! Don't give up! The first shall be last and that last shall be first, right? Right? Right? Right? Just put on this Tom Petty song and sing it out! And maybe learn to social network....Ugh.
At the gym this morning I read an article in O about how people come up with hangups for themselves when they're too intimidated or overwhelmed by the ones they already have. I think the article's author, Martha Beck, referred to them as "designated issues," or something like that. They're like security blankets--nice, big, obsessive distractions to get one out of dealing with all the other junk they really shoud be dealing with. Like being a hypochondriac instead of cleaning your house or whatever. Now, I usually hate self-help literature, especially the books--they make me feel neurotic--but I thought this was a really good article. Worth about $1000 in counseling sessions, I'd say.
Sometimes I feel like Fay Wray in King Kong's fist. But at least the view is nice from up there.
Nov. 8, 2009
I remember when the internet was new, there was talk of people getting addicted to it. At the time, I thought that that was silly. How could something like THAT possibly happen? Well, now I'm older and I know that practically anything can happen. Now that I'm signed up to more social networking sites than I can possibly handle and hopelessly hooked on YouTube, I totally understand. It's fun to read people's poems on the networking sites. It's fun to be your own D.J. I mean remember the 80s and 90s, going to those clubs where they'd be playing a lot of crap and you really wanted to dance to some GOOD stuff? Well, now I'M the freakin' D.J., okay? Now only cool stuff gets played! So ha, ha, ha!
Moderation. Everything in moderation. You know what? Sometimes I don't want to be moderate! Sometimes I want to be extreme!
All right. Cool your jets. Time to get down to domestic business. Time to make pancakes for the brood.
Nov. 9, 2009
I'm slobbering in anticipation of writing ALL DAY LONG on a day off Wednesday.
Here's something for you bohemians.
Nov. 10, 2009
Isn't it weird to think of all the babies being born all over the planet right now, at this very second? And all the people who are gasping their last breaths right now, at this very second? People professing their undying love. People screaming their hateful last words (oh, get that last word in!) People juggling their groceries and their car keys. People getting out of work. People going in to work. How many people are jumping out of planes right now, just for the thrill of it? How many people are praying to God for help with big problems right now? How many people are fighting off rapists? (God, help them.) How many people loading guns with bullets? People are daydreaming. People are downloading music. People are peeing. Changing diapers. Dancing. Making out. Scrubbing floors. Balancing the budget. Monkeying around on the internet.
Perhaps fish at the bottom of the ocean profess their undying love for the plankton they are about to eat. Perhaps the plankton say, "I love you, too," and don't mind being eaten. All I know is that in the most terrifying moments of my life, things went into slow motion. The near head-on collision. The slipping on an icy sidewalk, falling and managing to cradle the baby's head. I felt it, but I didn't feel it. And some of the most intense things I've ever felt seemed almost to be my own inventions. Who am I, anyway? Where are we anyway? What's it all about? And how is it that I once had a precognitive dream in which I dreamed of a girl a year and a half before I actually met her? What does that say about the nature of reality and the nature of future time and/or destiny? When so many people making so many decisions result in the crossing of two individual paths?
Well, time to go to sleep. Another huge mystery. I would like to harness a dream with a saddle and reins and gallop, gallop, gallop away....
Nov. 11, 2009
This movie reminds me of my childhood. This scene reminds me of cops and shrinks. Arlo is so cute and scantily-clad in this! And what a luscious head of hair!
Nov. 13, 2009
Just when I thought I'd never write a poem again, a decent one arrived. I even love the title. It's called, "JFK-Assassination-Baby-Boomer Support Group." Hope it gets published soon so people can read it!
Nov. 14, 2009
I am not perfect. If I were perfect I might be more like some of these ladies....
And how about if we change the title of this Kinks song to "Supermom" instead of "Superman."
And last but not least...here's my husband Matthew "I-have-to-make-a-bell-now" Smith :) :) at work. Not bad for his very first video!
Nov. 18, 2009
My advice: stir lightening into a lavender teacup. Your day will taste like blueberries all day long!
And do not read lovely, lyrical stories for drunk, socializing people. They do not pay attention. Read instead for people at coffee shops who are all hyped up on caffeine and have the energy to be appreciative!
LATER--I'm putting a link to a Theodore Roethke poem below.
I love most of it but think it has a weak ending. Just not satisfied with that very last line....Well, you think, who is SHE to criticize that Roethke poem?! Well, I don't know, who are YOU reading this website now? I've been loving poetry most of my life, I guess I can have an opinion, right? Besides, it's a poem about an identity crisis and I can kind of relate. I actually wrote something sort of similiar called "Revel with Me," which was published in Calliope Nerve awhile back. It's one long metaphor for alienation and epiphany.
This poem basically kicks ass. And I take what I said about the last line back. It's growing on me. It's a spectacular knockout punch of a poem! Makes me want to just jump up and down! I'll fight anyone who puts it down!
I'm putting a link to it because I'm afraid I'll be sued by T. Roethke's descendants/relatives if I reproduce it here. I have enough problems. I mean, every time I look in the rear view mirror these days, I think the cops are behind me....They'll say, "You're under arrest." And I'll say, "Why?" And they'll say, "Just for being you!"
Nov. 19, 2009
Apparently Meryl Streep has Bucks County ancestry. Never would have guessed that, but I guess she does have kind of an aristocratic face...which matches. She had an ancestor who was kicked out of Quaker meeting for signing up for the Revolutionary War. My grandparents moved to Bucks in the 30s or 40s, from Greenwich Villiage. They'd moved around a bit before that, I think. I hardly even know how my family got to this country. My dad's mother would only say, "We come from a long line of horse thieves." And I think, according to my mom regarding her side, some Irish woman came over from County Cork in the late 1800s. Who knows? I never paid much attention to my mother and aunt and grandmother talking about family history, but now that I'm pretty sure it will never happen again, I miss the way they used to all get together and sing songs. I don't even know the songs!
What will we do with a drunken sailor, anyway? Put him in bed with the captain's daughter! (I only knew the question part of that song. The answer I had to look up online!)
Nov. 20, 2009
Oh, those night pixies and their soul-stealing!
Nov. 21, 2009
Party weekend.
Cake. Toys. Noise. Nerves.
And a healthy dose of love.
Nov. 22, 2010
Holy guacamole, batman. Another Pushcart nomination! For "The Librarian and the Janitor." Shall I pinch myself? Thank you, Bartleby-Snopes.
LATER--No video but I just gotta put this up 'cuz it's a great song for any lover of words. And it reminds me of the electric typewriter my mom bought me when I went off to college. BACK IN THE DAY: tapa-tapa-tick-a--Ding!!
Nov. 23, 2010
Last night I had one of those dreams where I was on a journey toward some undefined end--one of those protracted adventure dreams in which one has no idea where one is going. I ended up on an island in the middle of the river. I climbed up a tree, was looking around and spied a mountain across from me which had a row of three teepees on it. There were three Indians in loincloths in front of one of the teepees. I was thinking of yelling a greeting to them when a few arrows happened to whizz past my ears. So, I guess they weren't coming for Thanksgiving dinner this year! Okay, we'll try and work it out later, when you want to talk, guys! I scrambled out of the the tree and dove into the water to swim away. I had a little boy and a also little fluffy dog with me that I was responsible for. I swam clumsily and slowly in about six inches of water, more crawling than swimming. Ended up in a line of motor boats near another island. Of course, I didn't know where I was going. Was just glad I didn't have an arrow tip lodged in my my head like that guy in the old book I read (and rebound) at the book bindery I worked at years back. That guy had been wandering in the desert for days before someone found him and got him medical attention. The book had a diagram of his skull and the wound site. I guess it was a medical book....
Well, I have to get about the adventure of my Monday morning routine now!
LATER--this is really getting to be a replacement of journal writing for me. I just have to remember that I can't put everything up--not nearly everything! Nobody wants to hear the sordid details of my day-to-day life. Or maybe they do, but they're not going to! So, ha ha, all you busy bodies! Wouldn't you like to know?!
Tonight I got my hair cut at one of those upscale salons that cuts curly hair dry. I usually go to the el cheapo places and let them butcher me. But I was curious about this dry-cut process, so I laid out about fifty bucks for this haircut and tip. Anyway, I got to sit under this weird hair dryer and read a magazine for awhile, like I've seen people do, (mainly on old TV, I guess,) and it was fun. I read some beauty magazine which was one big advertisement for plastic surgery and such. It had all these pictures of women's breasts, "before" and "after" pictures. I can say that with very few exceptions, I liked all the women's breasts better BEFORE they had the breast-augmenting or enhancing surgery. Well, anyway. I finished up with that (and listening to all that God-awful music they had playing) and felt a bit ambivalent about my reflection at the very end of it all. Of course, the shop people loved it. My husband gave it the thumbs up too. It is more versatile because it has different lengths. I no longer look like a hippie chick in need of a haircut...now I look I a hippie chick who's gone to an upscale hair salon! And if I wear it up I look like a flapper, which is cool. I'll get used to it.
Let's put up something marvelous to make up for lame music everywhere! This makes me so glad to be alive! Mercy, mercy me!
Nov. 25, 2009
A reminisence of my sister's crayon drawing of a pilgrim: Hanging anachronistically in the hallway of our elementary school in the 70s, hers was the only pilgrim that happened to be wearing (along with the usual black/white attire) long strings of beads, red lipstick, and high heels. If we had lived back then, they definitely would have pilloried us!
Nov. 26, 2009
I hear a hurricane blew through Cockermouth, England the other day. Anyway, happy Thanksgiving!
Nov. something-or-other, 2009 Don't know the date. As soon as I start taking days off from work my connection to the calendar completely dissolves. It's somewhere around Thanksgiving. I had a dream the other night that I was pregnant. It was one of those situations where nobody would have been happy about it. Like I was sixteen. Or it was not my husband's baby. Something like that. I don't remember. I was not like the women these girls are singing about below. I was like the girls certain highway billboards call out to, "Pregnant? Alone? Utterly desperate? Practically suicidal? Give us a call, NOW!"
Nov. 30, 2009
And the serpent came to Eve in Eden and said, "You don't have to eat the whole apple, just a bite. One bite. Just one eensy-beensy little bite...."
and if you eat it all, you can have dessert....
LATER--I think I'm experiencing growing pains. I think I'm turning into a light bulb or something else glowing or brilliant. I'm ninety percent water and ten percent electrical and fifty percent live wire. OMG! It's a recipe for disaster! Now, if I could just get that serpent to get the heck away from me....
Now scat. I said, Scat, I don't care what your credentials are! Get out of my corner of Eden right this minute! I'm telling your mother. I have her number. I mean it. You're in deep trouble, slimy.
The girls in this video go very nicely beserk after awhile; the serpent approves. I do not.
Dec. 1, 2009
Eve and the serpent are cuddled up together beneath a tree in Eden. Dappled light is falling over their laps and hands. Except that he is all lap and no hands. There are pink flower petals wafting through the air on spring breeze. It's all very romantic. There is no pollution. Innocence is everywhere. I think you should think about heading home now, don't you? Eve asks.Noooooooo....the serpent answers and wraps himself around her. (I think this is turning into a short story.) Eve gets up to retrieve her kimono from the nearest, lowest tree branch. Eve stays put and has six different ideas, all of them bad. Eve sits in a sweating paralysis of nerves whispering to herself for hours. Eve squeezes her temples between her hands, distraught. Eve goes to McDonald's for a cheeseburger. Eve cures world hunger. Eve digs Phoebe's first draft. Eve looks that guy right in the eye and tells him to get lost. I'll call you....she says.I'll love you....he says.Okay, whatever. Love me if you must. I have to go.And the river drifts by, a water-quilt flecked with light, wisdom coursing away in the direction of mystery. Don't say anything more, it says, don't say anything more. Of course not.Dec. 2, 2009
I'm really amazed by how much space this first page has. It's like I'm scrolling down to China! But anyway, my general mood is bah humbug even though I was unusually animated all day today at work. Now I'm thoroughly glum. Had no milk or potatoes tonight to finish making two (I know it's weird) soups I started making, so I'll have to finish them tomorrow night. Oh well, they'll taste better after all the flavors blend together over night, and it'll make dinner easier tomorrow. One will be potato leek and the other will be butternut squash. I should try and get myself out of the Christmas-hating mode (my favorite holiday is Halloween) by planning some fun, interesting new recipe or coming up with the most wonderful gift ever for someone. Use a little creativity. There's a way out of any jam, right? Even Christmas. Aren't I awful?! Could I possibly be again that excited child that I once was? I have to come up with a defeat-the-Christmas-blues plan! And it can't involve money.
Thanks, Elvis! Hey, maybe what I need is a big rockin'-out dance party!! Maybe by myself, maybe in my socks, but still a dance party! D.J. Phoeb knows just what to play!
Dec. 4, 2009
I feel like staying up all night and playing DJ/VJ with YouTube but that would not be a good idea with my lifestyle. I got myself a handful of tickets in Jersey tonight on the way back from the reading. What it really boils down to is that they were all for being forgetful, not for being a bad driver or anything like that. Too much living with my mind on flowers and pixies and writing and submissions and butternut squash soup and my day job and my kids and my husband and my sex life--and not enough mental space left over for licenses and insurance. I knew for the ride home that I should have gone over the bridge to Pennsy but I didn't! Why didn't I do that?! I was too lazy to turn the car around, I guess! I need to make a big note and tape it to my steering wheel. It will say, "When in doubt take the Pennsy side, not the Jersey side, because Jersey is crawling with what? What? A. seagulls. B. devils. C. cops. Think, Phoebe, think! Now, these are all correct answers, depending on where exactly one is in Jersey but the most correct answer is cops. COPS, COPS, COPS! Never forget that! JERSEY IS CRAWLING WITH COPS...and seagulls and devils and boardwalk fries....and pixies and sex and husbands and soup.
"use my hands for anything but steering...!" I love these guys!
Goodnight (or very early morning.) I'm going to be dead tomorrow. Figuratively speaking.
Dec. 6, 2009
This morning my husband asked me how I was feeling and I told him, I feel tired and cranky, like a bitch on wheels.
And he said, No, you're on foot.
Dec. 7, 2009
Another weird thing that happened this weekend was that we were at the local Christmas tree lighting ceremony and Santa was there in the firetruck, jacked way up on the cherrypicker; it was snowing and there were fireworks; Santa was throwing candy canes down to the kids below. It was all very pretty and I was thinking, "Wow, this is all very pretty!" when suddenly a little boy, overzealous in his retrieval of candy canes from the ground, plowed right into me (where I stood precariously balanced on a spot of ice) and knocked me over. I was holding a cup of hot chocolate and it splashed all over my coat, and the denim jacket under my coat, and my purse (the unstrained side, too!) My elbow still hurts but I am counting my blessings. Hey, I didn't get my teeth knocked out! If I can't get the chocolate stain out of my purse (which I can't because I plan on not trying that hard, if at all) I get to maybe buy a new purse! It's an excuse to be selfish at Christmas, yay! Mars (the "accident" planet must be afflicted this week, I betcha.
Dec. 9, 2009
Must not have been much real chocolate in my hot chocolate (those creeps!) because it faded right off my purse--and it had at first looked kinda zebra-stripey. And the denim jacket came out of the washer perfectly clean, without any pre-treating with horrid chemicals. I am a hater of horrid chemicals. When one's father makes one read Nuclear Madness by Dr. Helen Caldicott at age fourteen and then publishes the breakout book on Agent Orange himself a few years later (he typed in the cold with gloves on his hands sometimes for that one, living in a little trailer) well, one ends up hating chemicals and distrusting the government forever. Anyway, looks like I have no excuse to buy myself a new purse. It's A-OK. I've had a bonding experience with this one!
Here's my favorite Christmas song.
And one last thing--I feel really bad about Billy Joel's daughter. I hope everything works out all right. Must be hard to be the daughter of two such people as she has for parents, each exceptional in their own way.
Dec. 10, 2009
I used to play this game with all my old diaries: "What was I doing in --?" (insert arbitrary date at the dash) Well, back on Thanksgiving day of 1989, I was at home with my mom.
No turkey or stuffing, we couldn't cook a turkey if we wanted to because the camp oven is too small. Besides, Mom is all macrobiotic ("weighing 105 lbs in this corner...!") and we've been eating rice, kale, and miso soup today. *** cried this morning over the phone. Her car was vandalized last night. Someone, who left big workboot footprints in the snow smashed her windshield and the back window with a hammer. The hammer fell into the back seat and was unretrieved by the culprit. I told her all of this was just a phase and she responded with bitterness and spite.
My car wouldn't start this morning. I'd planned on going to work but abandoned that idea. Then the car started but I couldn't get it out of the driveway--it was sliding around all over the place--and Mom was afraid I was going to slip into the big, craigy, disaster-ditch on the left- hand side of the drive.
Ah, sweet memories of a country holiday! I wrote poetry back then that could kindly be described as "having potential." I wrote, and agonized, over men constantly. I guess not much has changed except that my cars are a little more dependable now!
I do like these two lines though, from 1989....
bird's fly from the field
like wishes from a heart
Dec. 12, 2009
Last night someone read Rumi. There are a lot of ancient, poignant poems on this site.
Dec. 14, 2009
Tonight in municipal court I will say, "Coppers, Judge--anybody and everybody--I PLEAD NOT GUILTY!! You can even go check, I now have a working light bulb over my back license plate!"
LATER--Okay, nevermind what I said before. I'm GUILTY. Guilty of having green eyes. Guilty of having a hard-beating heart. Guilty of living on planet earth. Guilty of daring to cross those bridges over the Delaware River into New Jersey! I called my husband as soon as my flaming-red-face-of-embarassment night court ordeal was over with and he said, "Well, you should celebrate having saved $187 by taking off your top and flooring it! You remember Thelma and Louise, don't you?"
Well, honey, I checked it out and they have their tops ON!
In other news, someone lent us their Pocono timeshare for the weekend so we spent the weekend bouncing from hot tub to pool, from pool to hot tub, and all around the indoor water park with a couple dips into the hot tub there too. Now I know what that whole scene is all about. The entire family is thoroughly pruny and bleached!
Dec. 16, 2009
Now that I'm a contributing editor to Sugar Mule...I can send such professional emails as the one I just wrote:
"Where's your story, bitch? :)
love, the Editor"
LATER--I feel like I'm just waking up to being alive sometimes. Rip Van Literary Winkle. I'm reading, Joyce Carol Oates's, We Were the Mulvaneys. Why? The same reason I read half of Kurt Vonnegut's Palm Sunday--because I found it on a giveaway table in an apartment building where my agency has a little satellite office. I always look for peppermint and butterscotch candies at that particular apt building. Someone keeps a stash of them in a little jar the community room--they actually just upgraded to an actual candy dish though. I like community rooms because there is never, or rarely ever, anyone in them (ironic isn't it?) so they're very, very peaceful. When I was in high school, heaven to me was, like, rock bands and pizza. Now heaven to me is an empty community room.
And rock bands. (And pizza.)
Now, here's a trailer for a movie that I want to see because my mom's old friends are in it--and my cousins' dad (he was in the band.) I grew up with this music.
And I'll plug my uncle while I'm at it. I grew up with this music too. That echoey piano could just make me cry. Flashes me right back to my childhood. Good Lord....that fake horn thing he did with his hand, so funny! But dang it all, everyone's getting so old...!
Here's some band called Cat Power covering Uncle Michael's song, "Werewolf." (Everyone on YouTube seems to assume it was written by them, but it wasn't.) I remember running fast, fast, fast, barefoot through the cool Vermont grass to request this song at a party when I was about ten or so....I hope he's making some money off this if it was in a movie and everything....HE'D BETTER MAKE SOME MONEY OFF IT CUZ I'M SICK OF HEARING RIPOFF STORIES IN THIS DOG-EAT-DOG WORLD!! You know what? We have enough creative people in my family! Enough all ready! What we really need are some lawyers to represent the rest of us!! I'm not joking. Come on, won't somebody just marry a lawyer?!
Oh yeah, and he does all the artwork/cartoons himself. I think some of his artwork is exceptional, truly top-notch stuff!
Is my website official or unofficial? Can anyone tell me? I cast my love out into cyberspace--but it's far too late for me to marry a lawyer. Even an artistic one.
Dec. 18, 2009
I really should not be writing on this website as much as I do. We're on a collision course with Christmas over here. There are about five loads of laundry to be done, and the only guest who would want to stay in the guest bedroom would be--maybe Oscar the Grouch (and he's not the one coming for Christmas.) Things are going to get crazy here this weekend. We have to put up lights and get the tree. We have to wash and clean and scrub and vacuum. I have said I would make rice pudding--and it's not nice to break promises (it actually wasn't a promise--I could still get out of it, but it wouldn't be very nice of me.) But on the bright side, I did a good deed recently that made me smile for half an afternoon. I felt just like the Grinch after his heart starts to grow. I thought, "Wow, being nice is really fun, I should do more of this!" (Being a paid case worker doesn't even count. Money negates everything.) I bought a toy for this lady's daughter because I was at the store anyway and she'd said she didn't know WHEN she was going to have time to get over there--and she knew the store had the toy she wanted (and she'd stupidly passed it over thinking she'd buy it online, and now she couldn't find it online) and her daughter had been talking about this toy for a WHOLE YEAR. So--I happened to be at the store anyway, and I got her daughter the toy. Of course she had to pay me (I ain't that friggin' nice) but she got tears in her eyes and gave me big hugs when I showed up at her job and dropped it off for her. --It was all very convenient for me, so I just want everyone to know, I'm really not that nice. Only when it's convenient and...I'm basically selfish and mean! So don't get any misconceptions of me!
Hope y'all survive the next several days...I'm going to try and stay off of here....
Dec. 19, 2009
O.K., I have very little will power--here I am again. Snow is falling. I went to the gym. I'm trying to fold up a ton of old (clean) laundry that's been sitting around upstairs for weeks. Dang, it's all wrinkled! I absolutely refuse to iron though! Oh, I am a desperate woman.
So anyway...here's some pretty piano music on this quick little website interlude....Then back to work and NO shirking!
Dec. 20, 2009
Laundry. Washing floor. Cooking something relatively edible for dinner. More Laundry. Is anyone seeking refuge from holiday cheer? I CAN take it in little bites...but here's a big break.
LATER--Swept and scrubbed the stairs. Can't remember when that might last have been done! Bathroom looks like humans live here now....
I used to have a striped dress like the one in this video when I was in college. A very long time ago!
Dec. 21, 2009
My husband introduced me to Richard Brautigan's work years ago. Here's a little Christmas present/poem for everyone. I love black and white film and this girl has a beautiful back....
OH, AND MY STORY, "DENTIST" IS UP ON BARTLEBY-SNOPES AS OF TOMORROW! You can cast your vote for December story of the month until the end of the month. Tomorrow I'll put up the link.
Dec. 23, 2009
Mrs. Claus and her elves are totally whipped. And there are lots of things to wrap yet in the North Pole. Mrs. Claus succumbs to selfish impulses while procuring gifts for others. Mrs. Claus is BAD. She needs to brush up on her altruism studies.
I got rid of my Devo hat last year because it got a crack in it....
Dec. 23, 2009 (the real Dec. 23)
"Dentist" is now up on Bartleby-Snopes. I can't put up the link right now because of technical difficulties. But devoted Phoeb-enthusiasts can still go to Bartleby-Snopes and vote for the story if they are so inclined. My stories rock the world (a small world, a sparsely-populated world--where the natives are probably just as crazed as myself--but still a world!)
LATER--played Bananagrams until kid-bedtime. Only had the mental capacity to come up with two, three, and four letter words (no cursing allowed.) "Train" was my "big" word. But then all those connected words started me thinking of interesting sentences, like, "Do egrets have regrets?" and, "What is life like in hot pixie pods?" I guess I'm giddy. I accidentally told them that the second line in "Jingle Bells," was "in a one-force open sleigh," which cracked me up and made me think of this lemon-of-a-sleigh stuck in one damn gear the whole way to wherever. And then of course the bells on Bob's tail ring. It doesn't get any funnier than that. Who is this wildman, Bob, anyway? And why is he pulling my sleigh? And "Where are We Going?"
CAST YOUR VOTE FOR THE HOTSHOT! She deserves votes! She will be wrapping presents late at night, until she becomes even more delerious than she already is!
And the radio stations keep playing X-mas songs and heavy metal lately. Interesting combo. And universal healthcare is coming along, I guess. I should start paying attention. Oh, my Dad will fill me in, Thank God. Someone's got to orient me to reality!
Yes, the boots, yes. Tattoos--only if they're henna. No to drugs. Booze in moderation. Sex, yes. Anvil, yes. Metal, yes. Christmas--oh, alright already! Merry. Merry Grinchmas. Grinchmasters and Johnson. Yesh, I'm a little nuts. So, what you gonna do 'bout it. A big fat nuthin--ha! Ho ho ho! Ho....
Dec. 26, 2009
All things Harry Potter were hits at Christmas.
I can't believe how rich J.K. Rowling is. I love her story, how she started out as a divorced (or single?) mother living on the dole, writing in coffee shops while her baby napped in the pram....She's like me. Or, rather, I'm like her--with the cramming writing time in so awkardly. My writing time is like dirty rags stuffed in a homeless man's pockets! One day my writing and I will arrive at that cozy little soup kitchen in the sky, by God. After I dumpster dive the directions and stitch some goose-down angel wings. I am an imposter but I can fly, damn it, I can!
What little I've heard J.K. Rowling speak, she doesn't come off like one of these annoying megalomaniac types. She comes off like a nice, modest woman who happened to have a few brain cells to rub together, and who happened to really touch a nerve with the kids. The really wealthy author-types out there are probably all eating caviar for breakfast off the board-flat bellies of their supermodel trophy wives (or husbands.) I just finished Joyce Carol Oates's We Were The Mulvaneys though.) If a book doesn't throttle me in the first page, with some unusual trinket of stance or metaphor, or a rousing (though not contrived) plot start, I lose patience. I can not bear to read when it requires effort. I want to slip into sheets of passion--not sheets that I have to iron and fold.
I wonder if my husband, being a vegeterian, would ever let me eat caviar off his belly?
Dec. 27, 2009
Here I am back on my public diary like some kind of exhibitionist psycho. It's all for the book, it's all for the book. I will not neglect my marble notebooks forever. Today is one of those days where I feel like a bad person. I'm not actually a bad person, but I feel like one. Can the caliber of one's thoughts alone corrode the soul? Do I even have a soul? Is there a God? Why are we on this planet? Oh, stuff it!
What's really happening is that I'm just like a sleepy baby. I get tired and cranky and throw little fits, if not outwardly, then inwardly. So this entry is a fit. --I've been reading the new Chaffey Review today. It's got my poem "Rebirth of Venus" in it. This issue abounds with juicy poems and flash fiction tidbits that all incisively expound on just how kooky and angst-ridden we all are. Us thoroughly-together poets. It's the "therapy" issue! How uplifting to read the therapy issue of Chaffey when one is exhausted and on a verge of a cry-baby cranky fit!
Is it just me or does everyone else on this planet feel like they own the Beatles--like those guys are members of our own families--or are our ex-lovers--or are our sun and moon in a vast and selfish sky? They're mine, I tell you, ALL MINE! Wah, wah, wah.
Mine, mine. (I, me me, mine....)
friggin' geniuses and all mine. I'm so efin' lucky! Roll over on the pillow....
Flip the pillow over to the cool side. Mine. Mine. Mine. My love is cloying and sticky. My love.
Zzzzzzzz....
It's all mine and u know it. All of it.
I own nothing but it is all mine.
Dec. 28, 2009 When I'm away from home I can not optimally edit this website. Go to beneath the publications to read more....
Here's my hotshot book cover. That's what they call me around the house now, "hotshot."
Jan. 13, 2010 I feel like I'm getting sick. My throat is a little sore and my body is starting to ache. Time for some rock music.
Jan. 14, 2010 My publisher, Judith, must be in love with me to send me such videos! (No, in actuality she she is only in love with my work.) Now back to sniffley bed for me....get some rest.
Jan. 15, 2010 Another achy day. Low grade fever. I look like Medusa. I want to be the girl with the most cake, but the idea of eating doesn't attract me right now.
LATER--Slept until 1:30 p.m. My husband works from home and it's always nice to have the rare luxury of the house to myself when everyone is out. Even sick, I love it!
Well, let's play "What was D.J. Phoeb doing in--?" In 1993 I was trying to figure out where on earth I could comfortably, affordably live. A little background to this is that when I first met my husband he'd made a teepee for some guy's big party....
Sep. 29, 1993
I'm very anxious today. I'm going to go home and ask *** to move out. I was going to move in with Matthew but he's already told Miriam that he wants to move out--into a teepee on ***'s farm. We fought like crazy at Miriam's because of the tension of living there. He doesn't want to stay there. He wants to continue on with the teepee plan and he says I can always stay with him whatever happens--but I think it'd be better for us to wait to move in together.
What happened was that I lived multiple places after that, all of them with Matthew, none of them involving a teepee.
I found a note to myself near that journal entry that mentioned this song.
Maybe a very small part of me does actually have penis envy! I hate Freud! This coming from a lady fixated in the oral stage who happens not to be lucky enough to have been born with a penis. Yeah, he sucks!
It's funny how people looking for other things on the web end up tripping over my website. People google stuff like "spiced tomato jelly" or "Heidi Fleiss + Death Valley home" and end up with ME! So let me just put a few more subjects out there for google to latch onto.
This seaon's Project Runway has a Bucks County designer, Pamela Ptak.
I love mango salsa with cilantro.
I pray to win the Pulitzer Prize. I would be equally happy with the National Book Award.
I wish Oprah Winfrey would run her show forever.
I only stay in inexpensive hotels. I never go to four-star (or is that five-star?) restaurants.
Diane Fossey was an interesting woman who loved gorillas.
There is such a thing as tantric sex, but according to some comedians, the only sex that really exists after kids is "frantic sex."
Global warming is real but I leave a very small carbon footprint.
My novel will only cost about as much as a large pizza.
Now I'm really tired and have to go lie down again.
Jan. 16, 2010 Still sick. People really like their aspic out there in cyberspace (google search: jelly often made with spiced tomato juice.) Matthew and I were watching Psycho recently and when the one investigator said, "If it don't gel, it ain't aspic," I was gratified to know exactly what he was talking about. There are always a lot of great retro-words in books like Pride and Prejudice, too. Words like:
impute:
1. to attribute or ascribe: The children imputed magical powers to the old woman.
2. to attribute or ascribe (something discreditable), as to a person.
3. Law. to ascribe to or charge (a person) with an act or quality because of the conduct of another over whom one has control or for whose acts or conduct one is responsible.
4. Theology. to attribute (righteousness, guilt, etc.) to a person or persons vicariously; ascribe as derived from another.
5. Obsolete. to charge (a person) with fault.
In Pride and Prejudice I'm at the part where Lizzy realizes Darcy isn't a total monster after all. It's, of course, great when the guys in these stories start out as total monsters, then when the couple finally gets together it's that much more passionate. I love when I read a book that forces me, with the most calculated subtlety and complete lack of contrivance, to turn the page. This book is like that.
LATER--I found a much better video for "Detachable Penis" which I swapped for the previous one I'd put up. This is funny and also will prevent me from potentially getting in trouble with Judith for posting a pornographic album/CD cover on the site.
Jan. 17, 2010 This is some planet these guys have found themselves on....I wonder what "cuchi" means? I looked it up. It can't really mean "hog" can it?!
Jan. 19, 2010 My news: Edgar Allan Poe's mystery visitor didn't bring the roses and cognac to his grave on his birthday this year. AND I wish there would be some divine intervention in Haiti. AND I received a friendly and receptive welcome from the owner of a local boutique, Chelsea. She was quite happy to put one of my book promo cards on her counter (for all the hip college kids to peruse while waiting to purchase their hip and retro clothing.) I like it when people are nice to me. --I don't know what to do about Haiti. They had enough problems as it was!
Jan. 20, 2010 I dream of monster trucks filled with literature-inebriated librarians. They're all drunk with love for words words words: slick, donut-spinning, mud-spattering WORDS. Pedal to the metal, baby! (And of course they have the radio tuned to the Ramones....I saw that group so many times in my younger days....I even touched Joey's leather jacket once, as he walked by me at King Tut's City Garden in Trenton, NJ. Being a fan is so WEIRD.)
LATER--Is is better to be heartless or heartbroken? And why doesn't there ever seem to be any choice as to which dish one is served?
LATER YET--Answer: Heartbroken, of course. Hearts heal but guilt follows one forever.
* * *
Jan. 21, 2010 Sometimes it is necessary to live inside the glittery palace of chagrin. Or better yet to wander the clouds outside. Each footfall will bring one nearer to finality and forgetfulness.
LATER--I'm supposed to be working on this story "Relativity" which I plan to submit to the New Yorker, but it's from a homeless man's point of view and I guess that I just don't feel like being homeless right now. Well, the other character is crazy and I am pretty adept at doing crazy. Maybe I should invent a third character that is damned. And a fourth that is homeless, crazy AND damned. And a fifth that prays to be housed, sane, and righteous. None of them will be allowed to become despondent. I will make them all prevail. I will have enough strength for all five of their conflicting natures. But first. Let me vaporize.
And I vaporize with her....
Her Kind
By Anne Sexton
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.
I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.
I have been her kind but I am not putting on the dumb blue blazer of death any time soon.
Jan. 24, 2010
Insomnia is a curse. Maybe I should write a story about someone who is a homeless, crazy, cursed (and damned) insomniac--who also happens to be hooked on YouTube. He'd be going to the local library everyday to do it. Homeless people love libraries. Just like me.
The girls can't help it. And yes, you're the Beatles, you MAY "inquire discreetly!" Yes, YOU CAN!!!!
Jan. 27, 2010 I found another nice cafe in which to toss my literary baton, Wildflower, in Bethlehem. Lots of college students. I am growing fond of college students. The cafe has some vegeterian items on the menu that look good. I almost never eat anything at these places though because I'm nervous when I arrive. I prefer to just pop a lot of mints on the way there. Then I get up and read my sex-vibe stuff (which I just can't seem to stop writing. No wonder college students like me.) I try to read without letting any parts of me shake. No shaky legs, hands or voice. I'm getting better. Now, when the occasional creep gives me any attitude, I still can get right up there without hesitation, without even thinking of turning to jelly. Now I'm confident enough to know that by the time I'm done, a certain, probably large, percentage of the room is going to like what they heard. SO THERE.
In other news, being married to me is....not boring. Let's just leave it at that. Okay, let's just admit it. Maybe I'm a hell-bitch! Well, the best I can do is stuff a few prayers, apologies, and a mend-everything thimble of honesty in my little red apron as I walk along. Man, these pockets are kind of deep.
Jan. 28, 2010 Greetings lovers of aspic and fine literature, today it took me around three hours to get to work because of the snow. You should've seen my expert steering reflexes as I avoided ditch after ditch, tree after tree, and then my saint-like patience as I sat in gridlock traffic for two hours afterwards. It was so much FUN! I wish could do stuff like that EVERY DAY! Maybe I should write a poem about it. But of course I'd want the protagonist to end up at some wild swim party afterwards or something. "Oh darn, the snow made me late--not to my mundane bureaucratic job--but to this wild swim party where everyone is gorgeous and gifted and just admires me immensely!"
No, today was not such a day as that!
But look at this! Botswana Music
Jan. 29, 2010 Looking forward to a new coffee shop reading experience tonight. There are going to be some poetry slammers there and money raised goes to Haiti. I've never been to a poetry slam before so I can't wait!
Also giving blood today and have been eating liver pate all week in preparation. I hate when they tell me my blood is too Iron-deficient for donation, so I'm hoping this works out. Also took my Iron pill this a.m. instead of waiting until night like I usually do. I like imagining my blood being transfused into someone who desperately needs it.
LATER--I was able to give blood this morning, iron count was good. Now it's late at night and I'm glorifying in my loneliness.
"Go to the moon, you selfish dreamer." Isn't that just perfect? When I went up to the Fine Arts Work Center in Cape Cod a few years ago, I was giddy to find that Tennessee Williams had once lived out in the dunes there, in some sort of artist colony. Yep, it's just me and Tennessee, and the moon, and the worldwide web, all lonely like....
Jan. 30, 2010 Well, now not only lovers of aspic are swarming my site, but also people interested in majorette competitions. Come one, come all! I'm seriously thinking about trying out an aspic recipe just to see what all the fuss is about! Now if I could just convert all the majorettes and aspic-lovers to Angels Carry the Sun worship, everything would be peachy. I did once try out a recipe during the writing of Angels--a character makes Ceia de Natal, a traditional Brazilian turkey, so I wanted to try the recipe myself so I could write more convincingly about the experience. The turkey had to be marinated in rum, scallions, garlic, and tomato for a few days....It ended up being the best turkey I've ever had!
Well, I'm off to another coffee shop now in hopes of winning converts....Break a leg, Phoebe.
Jan. 31, 2010 I think Howard Zinn died today--or very recently. Saw something on Boston Review website. That's a shame. One less person on the save-the-world team.
Got three books out of the library today. Whitman's Leaves of Grass, a collection of Richard Wilbur's poetry, and a collection of Nathaniel West's work, including The Day of the Locust. Having three books out, for me, is simply begging for library fines but so be it. I'd jump off a bridge if I didn't have enough to read. Not to kill myself. Just to go swimming because there weren't any books around.
Feb. 2, 2010 Was looking around in my old journal and pinpointed the approximate time that I got my first computer--my guesstimate had been about right--it was in 1996 sometime. What I was doing in Sep. '96? Apparently feeling lonely and going to yard sales.
I got an end table w/a blue glass top for $15, an antique mirror for $10, and a pair of ice skates. Someday I am going to have a nicely furnished house.
The thing about "someday" is that it's always a long time coming. But at least milk crates are no longer the fundamental building blocks of my decor!
Feb. 3, 2010 I'm just pretending it's tomorrow. It's really still Feb. 2, 2010. But if I pretend it's tomorrow then I get an extra journal entry out of it, right? I'm just sitting here filling envelopes with poetry. I'm submitting. Or bombarding. Whatever. Here's a song that makes me cheerful:
This song also makes me want to belt out curse words like I have Tourette's. I love rock n roll.
Feb. 4, 2010 Tonight on the way home from yoga I heard Meredith Brook's "Bitch" on the radio, which I like a lot, but I liked the video for this one better. This is a really clever song too. If I had one question for God it would be "Why?"
Tonight is "Celebrity Rehab" and "Project Runway" night. We are prepared with popcorn and nutritional yeast. We could play a drinking game while enjoying these shows. Every time Tim Gun says "Make it work," we'd have to drink as much as possible, as fast as possible. I've been "hitting the booze" lately. Hitting the booze for me is about a glass or two of wine a night. Obviously, I've never had a drinking problem. I have plenty of other hangups though, don't you worry.
Phoebe's hangups: 1.) knowing I'm likeable but always feeling like people won't like me.
2.) knowing I'm likeable and not really liking other people.
3.) doubting my own likability.
4.) not respecting others enough to realize that they're smart enough to like me.
5.) basically thinking people are idiots when they're not.
6.) knowing that this kind of attitude makes me unlikable AND an idiot.
7.) my self-esteem is attached to a pendulum.
AND now for different flavors:
8.) writing about sex too much.
9.) obsessive thoughts.
10.) no will power when it comes to a bag of dried pineapple.
11.) turning myself inside out on the worldwide web.
yah, yah, yah. Whoever you are, I like you. You are reading these words which means you might like me--if you're not an idiot, that is. :)
Feb. 6, 2010
Here's a letter from June of 1985 that I never mailed:
Dearest ***,
Hi, I just wanted to let you know I am alive and well. I'm going to put up a good fight even though I'm a pacifist. I'm going to get things done in my life anyway. Not sure what, but I'll do something different. Maybe I could rehabilitate junkies or keep records in a mental hospital or research the mating habits of orphans. Or counsel people on vacations in the Bahamas.
I did go, did you know that?! I actually flew on a plane. *** and I did. And we had a moped crash while we were there. It was so exciting!
I think I'll leave off there although the letter is probably about twenty pages long. Yes, we all know that (to quote Oscar Wilde) youth is wasted on the young. I do actually enjoy the memory of that moped crash though, because we were in the jungle on a sunny day and we were going slow enough that neither of us got really hurt. I just had grass stains all over my clothes and we snapped a small tree (little larger than a sapling) in half. I remember feeling myself all over, wondering if I had any broken bones. We got a lift with some rasta guys back to the hotel. I did just write that we got "a ride" with the rasta guys, but anyone in the British Isles would be snickering at that, because over there getting a ride is slang for gettting laid. And no, we did not sleep with the guys, we just rode in their car! Oh my God, I just had the weirdest, stongest sense of deja vu, like I've already written that last sentence on this website before, but I couldn't have could I? I mean, maybe I thought about it or something. But I haven't hitchhiked a whole lot in my life. Only a few times. I leave my other fond hitchhiking memory for another entry. And girls (and boys,) please don't hitchhike unless you absolutely have to--like it's an emergency. And always use your intuition to send all psychos on their way asap. Don't let them near you. Travelling in numbers is a good safeguard, too. It's a good thing that girls have cell phones nowadays. It wasn't long ago when car breakdowns, etc necessitated relying on the kindness of strangers....
Here's the trailer for the movie featuring my uncle's song, "The Werewolf." It's actually in the trailer. Michael Hurley as sung by Cat Power.
Feb. 7, 2010 There's a Rolling Stone magazine in my bathroom with an article on Patti Smith that I've just barely begun reading. A lot of times these things get recyled before I ever actually finish reading what I'd intended on reading.
I like how see reads AND sings. I've been wondering if I should read AND dance. Dancing is my other big skill. Maybe I could sell books with it. Oh, heck. I don't know. I'm barely brave enough to read, let alone dance! I never knew writing a book would get me into a swamp like this! One doesn't think about marketing and promotion when one is off in their atelier just scribbling away the solitary hours...odes to sunsets or whatever....
Played Bananagrams today. It's like Scrabble for people who don't want to be bothered with adding up triple word scores.
